Steel products used as automatic axle units or engine parts are commonly manufactured by hot forging followed by machine finishing. In recent years, products for such purposes have been required to have a higher fatigue strength to achieve a reduction in size and wall thickness with the intention of reducing the weight of automobiles.
For example, as a technique for improving the fatigue strength of a hot forged product, Japanese Patent No. 3,100,492 discloses a method for making a hot forged product with high fatigue strength, wherein a forged product after hot forging is totally quenched, and then tempered to strengthen the product by precipitation hardening.
However, according to the method described in Japanese Patent No. 3,100,492, a hot forged product is totally subjected to direct cooling, which increases the hardness of the entire product thus decreasing the machinability of areas which are not to required to have high fatigue strength. A machine structural part for the above-described purposes is manufactured by roughly forming a product shape by hot forging, and then finishing the surface layer of the hot forged product usually by machining the entire surface layer. Accordingly, machining and surface grinding are indispensable in the manufacture of a machine structural part of this type, so that the increase in the hardness of the entire part inevitably decreases the tool life, which presents a serious problem.
In addition, precipitation hardening treatment requires additional tempering treatment, which is not preferable from the viewpoint of energy saving.
It could therefore be advantageous to provide a hot forged product and a method for advantageously making the same.